Werewolf vs SHIELD
by Kinners
Summary: What's the best way to hide a dark secret? To tell it so casually that nobody believes you. Kinners's darkest one is finally revealed under the dread light of the full moon, making the Avengers question the reality of the situation. How can their ditzy little friend be such a monster? Maybe she isn't after all. (Ties in to my 'Kinners vs. S.H.I.E.L.D.' fanfic)
1. Chapter 1

Loki walked the dimmed halls of the helicarrier with a nervous step, careful to keep his invisibility up as he prowled. This night was giving him a sense of foreboding that he didn't like. Undoubtedly it was the full moon that he'd been anticipating all week. He knew _why _he was on edge, but he didn't understand _why_. He shouldn't be this nervous, and he knew that-after all, Kinners couldn't _really_ be a werewolf. They didn't even exist on Midgard, if at all. She was always trying to make herself more mysterious than she truly was, but he could always see right through her. And he did not see a wolf.

Au contrare, he saw a friend.

But at the same time, there was that pesky glimmer of faith in the back of his mind. She talked about being a werewolf so naturally, and he of all people would be the first to know that she was a terrible liar. Perhaps it was such an old lie that she told it without any reaction at all anymore. Perhaps she even _believed_ it.

But there had to be some fine line of truth, didn't there?

"Beautiful night out, huh?" murmured Clint. Loki rolled his eyes and stopped-between Hawkeye and Black Widow, he couldn't brush past them without being noticed. They were holding hands, too. He almost gagged. Natasha nodded, a shadow of a smile on her lips. Only a shadow.

"Tony sure knows it," she muttered, shaking her head with an eyeroll. "He's so drunk he'd down a molotov, match and all. Did you see him hitting on the new girl? He's three times her age."

"Stupid is as stupid does," whispered Loki under his breath, eyes narrowed. That Stark imbecile was barely tolerable as it was. It was good for Tony that Kinners would tolerate anything for her friends. It still escaped Loki how she could stand such mortal idiocy, however.

"Stupid is as stupid does," echoed Hawkeye. Loki smirked to himself-he loved doing that. Nothing made him feel better like fooling someone. "out in the moonlight and everything. Who does he think he is?"

Loki's blood ran cold.

_Moonlight?_

Instinct seized the controls. Completely forgetting his magic with his urgency, he bowled over the two lovers in a breakneck sprint. What was he doing? Why was he so terrified of something that wasn't real? Was his inner truth sense so faulty that in his core, he truly believed?

Perhaps that was why he was running. Because he knew that she was a terrible liar. And because he knew that she wouldn't lie to him.

That spark of faith had fanned into fear. But he didn't know the meaning of the word, not really. Not yet. No one truly understands fear until one has been hunted.

* * *

><p>Kinners chuckled to herself, rolling her eyes at Tony. He staggered around in one of his older suits, waving a beer bottle around like nobody's business as he raved about everything from polar bears to the quality of his socks. He got so excited that he actually shattered the bottle with his grip, swearing in surprise and staggering backwards. She couldn't help but burst out laughing at that. After all, what are friends for? Laughing at you when you're being an idiot so that you can tell the difference.<p>

She looked behind her at the sound of an opening door, taking in the silhouetted old-school leather jacket and khaki cargo pants in a heartbeat. Steve. He stepped out of the doorway and let the door shut behind him with a pneumatic hiss, cocking an eyebrow at Tony.

"He's something, ain't he?" he muttered to her sidelong. Kinners nodded, raising an eyebrow and giving her skewed smile that meant: _Uh. _Yeah.

"You shaddap!" slurred Tony, almost falling over. She and Cap figured simultaneously that they should help him out before he hurt himself. They stepped out of the shadow of the helicarrier's bridge, but the touch of the moonlight stopped Kinners in her tracks as surely as a brick wall. A shiver rode up her spine, and she was suddenly hyperaware of herself. Her conscious mind screamed at her to get out, but its voice was muffled, as if from far below her. She only heard one voice clearly.

_Turn towards it._

She turned slowly, deliberately into the full embrace of the moon.

The night was gorgeous. Luna had surely outdone herself this night. The stars were scattered to the four winds, as clear as day without city lights anywhere near to outshine them. But the moon was even better...or worse, depending on your point of view. A perfect circle, dappled with grey, casting its gentle silver over the clouds around them and the helicarrier itself. Anything would look gorgeous in that divine light. But Kinners herself was something else.

Loki burst out the door, breathing heavily with his exertion. He froze, held in place for a breathless moment by Kinners. Even in a wrinkled t-shirt and ragged jeans, the look on her face was indescribable. Her hair seemed to float of its own accord, as if she were underwater. She shut her kaleidoscope eyes and took a moment to just breathe. She was beautiful.

But soon she would be terrible.

She doubled over with a grimace, as if she had been shot in the gut. Growling, she stumbled onto her knees, convulsing as if she were about to vomit. She held herself up from the steel floor with but a hand, making pained noises in deeper and deeper tones. She began to grow, muscles bulging under her suddenly skin-tight clothes and snapping the feeble fabric. Hands lengthened into lethal claws, skin gave way to shaggy fur, face lengthened into muzzle. She bowed her head in her agony and gave the most pitiful utterances of pain, but Loki knew that she would lash out at any moment, regardless of any physical torment she may be experiencing. Yet somehow he couldn't bring himself to move away, to save himself. He felt displaced, almost, strangely calm. Maybe she _was_ lying. It all felt like a dream.

Then he noticed Tony toddling towards her.

"Who invited _you_, Banner?" he drawled, poking the beast with what remained of the bottle. Next thing they knew Tony was flying across the deck, three gouges ripped in the torso of his suit.

Not a dream.

What used to be Kinners rose to her hind legs and threw her head back in a howl. The note rang out, long and clear and bone-chilling, freezing time for an eternal moment. There was only a silver patch on her chest to break up the robust brown of her pelt, a patch with such iridescence that it was as if she had stolen a chunk of the moon for herself. She brought herself back to earth and settled into a supple hunters' stalk, turning to Loki. The only thing to identify her as his old friend were her greenish eyes, looking more like a cold gray in the night. She snarled at him, the trademark warmth replaced by a cold predator's instinct.

"Get down!" shouted Cap from the other side of the beast, heartbeats before she met her mark. Loki ducked to the side at the last moment, but she skidded with her claws on the metal to turn on a dime, throwing up sparks that illuminated her toothy muzzle. She lunged again, but then he wasn't there. She only wasted half a moment with her eyes before shutting them and reverting to her sense of smell. The fear scent was almost overpowering, and its source was making a beeline for the door.

If Loki had been a hair slower, he would have been dead.

Slamming the door behind himself, Loki put his back to the reinforced hatch, letting Kinners slam herself against the door and taking a moment to calm his pounding heart and pulsing lungs. Though his eyes were wide open with fear, he barely noticed Hawkeye drawing an arrow and Black Widow raising her handgun-even though both weapons were aimed directly at his chest.

"What were you doing out there?" asked Natasha shortly. Loki was about to serve an explanation along with his cold glare, but none was necessary after what used to be Kinners pounded a basketball-sized dent in the wall inches from Loki's head. He whirled and backed away, wincing slightly at the volume when another dent appeared where his midsection had been. More appeared. He kept backing up.

"What _is_ that?" demanded Clint. Loki was too fear-stricken to bother responding-that's a first. He noted with a hint of smugness that Hawkeye sounded just as terrified as he did.

"Another hit, and that door's coming off," predicted Black Widow. They all waited for a breathless moment, waiting for the final blow. But it never came-what did come were the sounds of a familiar technology and several pointed noises.

"Of all the nights Tony decides to get drunk," muttered Loki to himself, slinking up to the door. Trying to still his pounding heart, he heaved it open, wincing at the grating that the mangled door made against the frame. But Kinners-or the wolf, depending on your point of view-was distracted by someone else.

The wolf seized Iron Man by the hand that had just fired a laser into her chest and slammed him into the ground. Loki winced inwardly, slightly reminded of the way the Hulk had treated him after his attack on New York. Iron Man desperately attempted to scramble to his feet, but his face was shoved back into the floor for his trouble. The wolf raised a bloody claw into the air, the moonlight illuminating it perfectly before the final, fatal blow.

She roared in pain and recoiled backwards, a carbon-alloy shaft run straight through her paw.

"Get away from it, Tony!" called Steve as Clint drew another arrow. Captain America and Black Widow rushed at it to give it a different target, while Barton provided cover fire to distract the wolf. Loki decided to vanish, although it had already been proved that the illusion was ineffective on the wolf. Old instincts die hard. Arrows rained on her, the werewolf's frustration scrawled on its face in a vehement snarl. Cracking one eye open a smidge, the first thing it saw was Agent Rogers. Recognizing it as an enemy, it pounced, but rather than getting to rip the living hide off of Steve, it got intercepted in midair.

Everyone was surprised when Iron Man tackled the wolf midleap, having considered him too drunk to understand the direness of the situation. Apparently almost dying twice had knocked the alcohol right out of his system-or at least, out of his brain. For the moment. His eyes squinted shut out of fear, he wished he had the coordination to shut off his audio receptors at the shrill sound of the beast's claws grating on his back and its vengeful roars in his ear. But instead he resolved to tighten his grip around its torso, until they both collided with the floor. Using a mind that nobody realized it had, the wolf twirled in the air to use Tony to cushion her own landing. Bonus-at the awkward angle and the intense velocity, his arm and the armor encasing it bent all at once with a metallic snap.

Tony cried out in pain, which for him meant a loud swear word with a choked sob for a grace note. Everything from his mid-bicep down felt as if it were being set on fire from the inside, yet strangely numb at the same time. No wonder he swore. Using their inertia to her advantage, the wolf dug her claws into the metal and swung Tony's body back at the two oncoming Avengers. Not even Black Widow had the reflexes to avoid him, it was such an unexpected move. She and Steve saw stars at the impact, flattened by Tony's weight. Their hearts jumped to their jugulars; with two of them trapped by a crippled hunk of metal, the wolf could kill all three of them in moments. They struggled to get out from under him, blood racing with adrenaline. But if she had intended to kill them, it wouldn't have mattered, because by the time they had freed themselves she would have been upon them. So what happened?

Hawkeye happened. Realizing that Natasha and Steve were as good as dead if the wolf decided to come for them, he revitalized his rain of arrows. She grimaced and turned her face away, dashing off to the side in an attempt to escape the incessant pricks of pain. She was surprisingly nimble, so most of them whizzed past her without so much as a hair nicked. But that was only because she was moving with breakneck speed. She bolted for the edge of the main complex, but somehow lost herself in the shadows. Hawkeye jogged a stride or two closer, but he didn't dare go any farther-who knew how far that wolf could jump?

By now Black Widow and Captain America had liberated themselves, supporting Tony between them. Still not quite grasping the reality of the situation, Hawkeye made for them, watching numbly as Natasha put her fingers to her ear.

"We need a med team out here, now, Stark is injured bad," she barked. Tony was either swearing under his breath or whimpering-possibly both.

"Copy," replied Coulson's voice in her ear, slightly fuzzy. But definitely real. "What's your status?"

"The rest of us are fine," assured Black Widow. "though we won't be so lucky next time. I'll brief you when we get inside."

"Any idea what the $# happened to Kinners?" asked Captain America. Hawkeye shook his head, running his hand through his hair and realizing for the first time how late it was and how tired he was. Not the last time.

"Only thing I've seen that's anything like that is the Hulk," sighed Clint to himself. "On the bright side, it doesn't seem to like pointy sticks launching at it at 350 fps."

"That's the only thing that saved us," observed Natasha. Though her face was stone, Clint knew that it was something special for her to laud him at all. "If you hadn't drawn its attention, we would've been dog food."

"_Dog food?_" echoed Cap. Hawkeye had no idea what she was talking about, either. She looked at them both for a moment, her eyebrow creeping up her forehead as the moment dragged on.

And the penny drops.

"No way," stated Hawkeye as flatly as he could, struggling to keep the fear out of his voice. "There's no way. Kinners? No. She's a sweetheart. She's not..._that._"

"We've seen weirder," pointed out Natasha. "From her _and _from other things."

Nobody could argue that. They were spared the discomfort of carrying on the conversation when the med team filed out of the door, two of which bearing a stretcher. As Steve heaved Tony's moaning corpse onto the linen, Natasha's eyes widened with yet another terror. Something obvious, something that she should have noticed, something that may very well be lethal for all of them.

"Where's Loki?"


	2. Chapter 2

Loki jumped at the sound of a rusty engine backfiring somewhere down the corridor. His own heartbeat grew to fortissimo, his breathing ragged. He took a deep breath and reasserted himself, though his fear still creeped at the back of his mind and at the edges of his vision like a predator he knew was there but couldn't shake. He felt so..._hunted_. He knew that in all likelihood, it wasn't he who had to search for Kinners-undoubtedly his fear stench would lead the beast right to him. No matter how silent he was, how potent his invisibility charms were, there was no way he could fool that monster. Not this time.

Which is truly what scared him. All his life, he'd faced enemies far greater than this, both in number and in power. But in a way they had been easier, because he could always duck out of existence for a moment and get his bearings. In this game of cat-and-mouse, or wolf-and-prey, rather, the tables were turned. The wolf could find him with or without clever tricks, and he had to rely on only his own intuition to discover her before she discovered him. An intuition he didn't wholeheartedly trust. In fact, she was probably stalking him right now. She might as well be breathing down his neck, her breath warm and carrying a slight odor of peppermint, left over from her ridiculous strike on smoking that was more a cry for attention than something with lasting affect...

Oh, wait.

Loki froze in terror, not daring to turn around. The hairs on the back of his neck stirred with the air disturbance. In a Jurassic Park-esque moment, he felt that if he moved the wolf would pounce upon him. Of course, it was about to do that anyway, so it's good that Loki acted when he did.

He sprang forward, hearing the lethal jaws snap on empty air a hair's breadth away from his nape. He whirled around to face the beast, but it had vanished in the dark. Not even the benevolence of moonlight could penetrate this deep into the inner workings of the Helicarrier. His eyes had nothing to work with. He could hear a rumbling growl, but the acoustics down here reverberated the accursed sound so that he couldn't pinpoint its true source. His options were limited, but a flash of ingenuity saved his life once more.

Setting his hand out in front of him, he summoned the one thing that could banish the dark-and his fear thereof.

A globe of light blossomed in his palm, rays the warmth of daylight flooding the hall gloriously. The wolf was illuminated before him in pristine quality, even as it shied away from the sudden brightness. Loki's moment of calm was short-lived, however. After all, just because he could see it didn't mean he was out of its claws yet.

It lashed out at him blindly, very nearly gutting him. He had to fight every instinct to turn and run, knowing that it would be upon him in moments if he chose to do so. It mumbled to itself in an almost Kinners-like way, blinking to adjust its eyes to the bright. Momentarily, it was stunned into a lack of violence. He decided to act on it while it lasted.

"I know you're in there," he muttered, half to himself. The wolf snarled in reply as if arguing. "You think you're invincible, you big bad wolf, you, but you said so yourself: I am _not_ a god. And you are not a beast...at least, not a mindless one."

The wolf watched him warily with almost intelligent eyes, a suspicious growl rising in her throat. She began to back away, her four paws making no sound save for the tiny click of claws on steel. In the back of his head he thanked his lucky stars that it hadn't thought to interrupt him with a bite to the throat. Perhaps it could be reasoned with. He stretched a hand out towards it, praying that it didn't notice how that hand trembled, meanwhile holding the light-giving hand closer to him as if it were a shield.

"Is there…," he had to gulp to wet his throat against his nerves. He forced himself to speak slowly, calmly-if she couldn't smell his fear, she would certainly hear it in his voice if he permitted it. "...a way to change you back? An Achilles' Heel, of sorts? Anything I can work with to take you down? Or, at least, to not die by...by your claws?" Asgard above, he had no idea she could be so terrifying. He then realized that, if anyone, Bruce and Tony had been given such information during their scientific conferences. Perhaps he should have stayed with the others rather than following his own pride. He mentally cursed himself for, for once in his life, being as foolish as his bullhead brother. The main reason that usually Thor did that and he didn't, however, was that Thor had the muscles to save his own skin. Loki couldn't say that for himself. He wished that Banner or Stark were here, to use their powers of intelligentia to find a weakness behind those lethal fangs. Or at least provide another target for the wolf.

His wish was granted.

A full–throated roar rang through the Helicarrier's underbelly. Loki practically jumped out of his skin, his heartbeat surging in raw fright. The wolf's pupils narrowed to mere pinpricks in the space of an instant, its nostrils flaring. It sensed that it had let its guard down, and as the nearest living being Loki would surely be the first to pay for that.

It pounced on him and his light went out, holding him to the ground with a grip like death and claws like iron. But instead of ripping his lifeblood out of him, it held itself low to the ground, sniffing the air cautiously. The way it stood over him seemed almost...protective somehow. But why would it act so, when moments ago it had been on the brink of annihilating him (and possibly devouring)?

He shuddered. Best not to think about being eaten when it's still very likely that you will be.

The wolf suddenly was gone, slinking away into the shadows with an alien calm. He scrambled to his feet, dreading the next thing he would see. If that horrid noise wasn't the wolf, than it was the Hulk. The last time he'd tangled with that green beast, it hadn't been pleasant.

Speaking of which.

The green beast stood a good sprint away, locking him in its sights.

It gave another bellow, stomping towards Loki with all the delicate grace of a charging elephant. He was frozen in place with terror, something that had never happened before. He hadn't the faintest clue what to do with his buzzing adrenaline. The wolf did.

Out of nowhere, it tackled the Hulk around the neck, digging into his flesh with its claws and sinking into his jugular with its jaws. The Hulk protested as loudly as it could as their momentum swung them into the wall, the noise of both the roar and the impact nearly shattering Loki's eardrums. He thrashed to throw it off of him, but it held on with a skill that surpassed that of a brute beast, as if this were some demented piggy-back ride. When the Hulk had the sense to reach behind himself to grab it, he was rewarded with a slash across the palm. Finally, voicing his frustration with deafening volume, he body-slammed itself into the ground.

The wolf was two steps ahead of him, having the sense to pounce off of his back before it got itself crushed. It growled, pacing back to give itself some room. The Hulk got to his feet, purple-tinted blood oozing from numerous wounds. Loki threw up an illusion instinctively, noting with a tinge of confusion that the wolf had put itself between him and the Hulk. What used to be Bruce Banner glared right through the wolf into Loki's heart, so it seemed, the radiation that fueled the mad mutant seeping into the very air. It stomped furiously and gave a deliberate battle cry, the sheer force of the sound giving Loki a deathly chill.

_**"BAD DOG!"**_

Evidently, Loki was more of a scaredy-cat.

Overwhelmed by the raw power clashing before his eyes, he turned and ran.

Even though she had barely flinched at the Hulk's assorted vocalizations, Kinners's ears pricked at the whoosh of air Loki had displaced. She whirled, staring after him with a frantic sense in her eyes. One could almost hear a pining whimper more befitting to a lonely dog as she leaped after him. But mid-stride, her tail was seized by the Hulk, and with a vehement snarl of her own she almost snapped his hand clean off. He dropped the tail and stumbled back, and she pounced. Fangs bared, eyes livid, Loki forgotten.

Bellows of rage and yowls of pain chased him down the hall, urging him on as surely as if the wolf were on his heels. But he knew that if Kinners _had_ been chasing him, he would have been down already. Yet run he did. That was all he could do. On and on, until he thought his lungs would explode. But the terror kept him going.

But why did he feel...guilty, almost?

He barely registered Captain America in the millisecond when he turned a corner and saw him jogging towards him. He didn't really notice anything until they plowed into each other.

Loki was dimly aware of colliding with something, the sensation of reality causing the mindless adrenaline to ebb slightly. When he fell and felt the impact of the ground against his back, he _really_ came back, with a wince and no indifferent swear. Rubbing the back of his head, he grudgingly took the hand that Steve offered him.

"&%$, Reindeer Games, you were running like hell was on your heels," he observed. Loki gave him a flat-browed glare, never scanty with his sarcasm even with desperate lungs.

"Number One," he began, a stormcloud brewing behind his forehead. "it _was_ hell." Rogers noted with his own pang of fear the spark of recalled terror in Loki's emerald eyes. This so-called god wasn't kidding. From the distant look on his face, he was still reeling from whatever it was he'd just seen. What _had_ he seen? Night like this, he would believe anything.

"And number two?" prompted the agent, cocking his eyebrow under his slightly mussed hairdo. Loki snapped back to reality with one of his finer-quality sarcastic drawls.

"Don't call me that." he growled. With a bitter hand planted on Captain America's chest, he brushed past, nursing his own fear with every step.


End file.
